A disaster prevention and mitigation centre funded by the US Pacific Command was inaugurated in the central province of Quang Tri on June 10.

Construction on the centre began in January 2014 at a cost of more than 9.2 billion VND (nearly 428,000 USD).

A representative of the provincial People’s Committee said Quang Tri pledges to optimise the use of this facility and hoped that the US Pacific Command would continue assisting in upgrading local infrastructure and technological equipment, ultimately helping improve the province’s disaster risk management and climate change adaptation capacity.

Quang Tri regularly suffers great losses from severe weather conditions such as storms, floods and whirlwinds. It is currently struggling with one of the worst droughts in history, which has devastated crops and heavily impacted livelihoods.

Over the past few years, a number of disaster mitigation measures have been carried out in Quang Tri, such as conducting communication activities to raise public awareness, updating flood scenarios, designing solutions to cope with super typhoons and regularly checking and repairing disaster prevention facilities like dams, reservoirs and docks.

However, these moves have not been fully effective due to limited financial resources.-VNA